Q&A with Texas A&M women's hoops coach Gary Blair

By Brent Zwerneman |
January 13, 2009

COLLEGE STATION – Texas A&M coach Gary Blair’s alma mater, Texas Tech, rolls into Aggieland tonight for a Big 12 showdown against eighth-ranked A&M. The affable Blair, A&M’s best salesman among the athletic department’s coaching staff, visited with the Chronicle on Monday about his time in Lubbock in the mid 1960s.

Q: What was your favorite part of living in Lubbock as a student?

GB: I really like the people in West Texas. I wanted to do something different than my (high school) friends in Dallas who were all going to Texas A&M or Texas. Plus, they didn’t tell me A&M was going to start admitting women.

Q: What was the worst part of Lubbock?

GB: The sand. I wore contacts. The sand blew so much harder back then, because the town is built up so much now compared to in the ’60s. There’s a blockage of it now. There was sand and there were tumbleweeds – the real thing – back then. The snow didn’t bother me at all.

Q: How good of a baseball player were you at Texas Tech? (He played one season).

GB: I was a 128-pounder center fielder who could drag bunt with the best of them. That’s the trouble when the outfield is playing on the infield. They knew I couldn’t hit. I was a good defensive center fielder who couldn’t hit my weight. That’s why my career ended, because I just wasn’t good enough.

Q: What do you do with a journalism degree from Texas Tech?

GB: I was going to go into advertising or public relations. My content was good by my grammar was atrocious. Other than that I was going to try coaching for five years. I’m still doing that.

Q: A lot of guys get the itch to coach at their alma mater along the way. You ever had that itch to return to the homeland? Let’s call it the Bear Bryant syndrome.

GB: When Marsha Sharp retired suddenly (in 2006) this was constantly ringing with the area code 806 (pointing to his cell phone) from friends out there calling me, telling me to come back home. At the same time, it wasn’t the right fit or the right time. Timing is everything in coaching.

Brent Zwerneman covers Texas A&M for the San Antonio Express-News and Houston Chronicle.